Corpse Charge Challenge

By sizemore Last edited 221 months ago
Corpse Charge Challenge
kiss_coffin.jpg

We love a good mock funeral as much as the next guy, but the one in town on Thursday seems a bit thick headed.

Undertakers are to stage a mock funeral in west London in protest at the £8 congestion charge which, they say, is killing off business. They say the toll is pushing up the cost of dying as mourners are forced to pay if their cortege crosses the London charging zone.

Killing off the undertaking business? What are people doing with their dearly departed then? The Londonist office has a huge fridge, but the freezer compartment just isn't that big. And who wants to look at Aunt Ethel every time you fancy some garden peas? Are you lot hoarding corpses in the basement like in the original Dawn of the Dead? Are Londoners really considering taking their business elsewhere to avoid the £8 charge? Have you seen a lot more black cabs on their way to the crematorium? At least they're the right colour... It would explain the pallour of some of the people on the 188 too.

One funeral director said it almost amounts to a "tax on the dead". Ok, but that £8 can probably be found down the back of the sofa you just inherited or perhaps such a sum simply doesn't register when you've just handed over almost three grand to help enrich someone else’s soil (lots of interesting ways to outwit funeral directors right here - we are trying to find a way to have our remains incorporated into the Londonist servers - a little like that guy who rubbed his testicles on the blogspot servers, but more tasteful like).

The Standard loves crap like this, but we'd like to suggest that readers nostalgic for the good old days when you could drive along and kill as many pedestrians, cyclists and fellow motorists as possible for free think back a little further and campaign for the return of plague carts - 'Bring Out Your Dead' could be the new student t shirt if that pesky bird flu mutates. In the meantime just balance two £2 coins on each eyelid of any corpse you've got lying around. Even Charon has overheads.

Last Updated 18 October 2005